


i'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones

by elsaclack



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (again), (just like half of my life tbh), And then this happened, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, M/M, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, a character study i guess?, also Stan lives, and i'm working on something longer for this fandom, and will be there in the morning, but i'm getting frustrated, idk i've been fighting writer's block for a while, inspired by taylor swift lyrics, it doesn't come up in this fic but it's important to ME that u know that stan is alive, so i decided to cry to evermore again, stan is on a flight to maine as this fic is unfolding, this is...idk what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:01:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28121322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: "Maybe there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart."-Eddie dreams, inexplicably, of an old stone cottage overgrown with ivy as he dies.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 13
Kudos: 53





	i'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones

**Author's Note:**

> HELLOOOOO
> 
> between voraciously reading as many IT fanfics as i can find and obsessively listening to evermore on repeat (while still managing to maintain a full-time job, sort of), it was really only a matter of time before something like this happened. i'm sure. i'm SURE this idea has been done before. but it's a beautiful quote and i've been obsessed with it since i read it and frankly? frankly. stephen king simply did not deserve eddie kaspbrak. stephen king can and WILL die by my sword.
> 
> until then, here's this fic, rife with references to taylor swift lyrics and fueled by my own existential spiraling.

Eddie dreams, inexplicably, of an old stone cottage overgrown with ivy as he dies.

The cottage seems small from the outside, perched along the gentle slope of an unfamiliar rolling hill, hardly discernible beneath the thick mist rolling like fog across the scene. He has the impression that he’s near the sea - he can taste the bitter salt of it on the gentle breeze when he opens his mouth to breathe in deep. He’s never been here before, of that he is certain, but there is a particular familiarity to the place that tugs at something deep and raw at the center of his being, growing stronger and more insistent the longer he stands squinting through the mist.

The cottage windows are dingy and cracked. The front door hangs crooked in its frame and squeaks horrendously on rusted hinges when he cautiously pushes it open. Dust and mildew and neglect hit him in a suffocating wall of _smell_ before he’s even set foot over the threshold. Light pours in, thin and sickly, through the sparse windows along the wall. Ancient, charred logs sit forgotten in the fireplace.

 _I’m finally home,_ he thinks.

He finds cleaning rags folded neatly in a small cupboard under the sink, and a spray bottle full of clear, clean-smelling liquid whose nozzle hasn’t been completely obliterated by nibbling rodents. Chopped wood teeters precariously in a pile to the right when he peers curiously out the back door; it looks fresh. He finds matches in another cupboard and a broom leaned against the corner of an otherwise empty coat closet; in ten minutes, a fire crackles merrily on the hearth, the old charred embers dumped in the tall yellow grass beyond the back door.

All but one of the windows stay open on their own, and he manages to find a smaller splinter of wood to prop the last one open. The fire and the gentle, lulling breezes faintly whistling through the windows accompany his quiet, mindless humming as he sets about cleaning the place.

Eddie knows he’s dying.

He can still feel the bursts of pain, sometimes. When he breathes too deep, or twists too quickly - what was an explosion now little more than pinpricks, but defined all the same. It’s the worst in the mornings, when he jerks awake gasping, hands clutched to his chest, threadbare mattress he found in a small bedroom branching off from the main room still quaking beneath his trembling body. He’s not really sure he understands what it means; all he knows is that he isn’t afraid. Not anymore.

Firewood continues appearing at the back door.

He spends most of his days cleaning - the dark mold built up along the edges of the bathtub, the blackened dirt stubbornly crowded in the corners.

He spends most of his days thinking - about the warm slick blood dripping down his fingers from the scarred palm of his hand, about the suffocating weight of fear in its most raw, primal form.

He spends most of his days remembering - the reassuring pressure of warm hands squeezing his shoulders, the hypnotic sway of a hammock beneath his back and the familiar scent of pure earth, the bright laughter twinkling in blue eyes absurdly magnified beneath thick-framed glasses.

He spends most of his days smiling.

He never used to smile, really, before he died. _Isn’t that something,_ he thinks. _Poor bastard._

He cleans the windows on the day the sun finally speckles down through the rolling clouds. Daylight, incandescent gold, warms his face; he closes his eyes and smiles absently. It feels like affection, like gentle lips pressing eternal promises of love to his skin.

It’s nice. Affection remains a pinnacle of forbidden fantasy, most often knocked from his line of vision by cloying _over-protection_ and _infantilization_. Physical contact limited to what reminded him of his own desperately fragile constitution, what cemented his delicacy as glass blown out paper-thin and warped into the shape of a boy, of a man.

Green grass flows lazy like an ebbing tide in the breeze. He can't remember when it went from yellow to green.

Firewood continues appearing at the back door, chopped neat the way Eddie likes. Sometimes, when he strains his ears, he thinks he can hear the rhythmic _whack, whack, whack_ of an axe splitting wood somewhere beyond the crest of the hill.

Slowly, the cottage takes on new life. Eddie can see it pulsing in the mortar between stones sometimes, golden as the sunlight but softer, somehow. Colors feel more vivid, too, like by mere virtue of existing within these walls Eddie has imparted some of the life he lost into its structure. The salty breeze washes in through the south-facing windows and it brings memories with it; memories of _them_ , his _friends_ , sharp and vivid in his mind. He’d thought, before, in the distant grey of his life, that he’d never truly had _friends._ Acquaintances and colleagues and family members and a wife, with whom the name of the game was ambivalent tolerance, but no _friends._

(No _love._ )

It seems silly, now. He had _friends._ He had _love._ His friends loved him, and he loved them back so fiercely it left no room for doubt in his mind. He was _thin_ and he was _sickly_ but that wasn’t true, was it, because only a body made _sturdy and resolute_ could have housed a love as big and impossible as Eddie’s. Only a body _worthy and strong_ could bear the weight of his friends’ love for him.

( _They would have loved me, anyway, no matter what._

 _They would have died for me, too, no matter what._ )

The cottage walls breathe and expand with each defiant breath that cycles through Eddie’s lungs.

Firewood continues appearing at the back door.

The days whittle away slowly. He savors each one.

And one morning, Eddie wakes with the knowledge that he is going to leave this place soon. He’s not sure about the when and the why, yet, but he knows it as surely as he knows his own name. The concept of moving on doesn’t frighten him, necessarily, but he can’t deny the melancholy that rushes through his veins at the thought. He likes it here, in this stone cottage half-buried beneath the ivy near the sea. Strands of wisteria have grown around the front door frame, woven irrevocably through the porous mortar there, woven through the frayed and tender strings of his heart.

He thinks of Stan on his last day in the cottage. He can picture Stan perfectly in his mind, just the way he was the last time Eddie saw him; sixteen, jaw sharp beneath the thin peachy stubble groused along his jaw, frowning in that wry, wan way he used to frown at a joke made at his expense. The way the sunlight peeked down through the waving foliage over their heads, catching soft and glowing in the errant curls trying valiantly to defy gravity at the crown of his head as he twisted his kippah between nervous hands. The way he’d only briefly met Eddie’s eyes before looking guiltily away.

He thinks of Stan and wonders, wonders if Stan knew.

He thinks of Stan and wonders what his house looked like when he died.

The mist descends with the setting sun. Eddie watches the last bloody rays flicker brazenly along the horizon. He leaves the fire crackling on the hearth, and steps over the palm-sized turtle slowly traversing the width of the dirt path just outside the front door.

( _I’m going to come back here, someday._ )

Darkness falls rapidly, but the light glows bright through the mist as Eddie picks his way back down the hill. He watches over his shoulder - watches the defined edges of it fade into softer shapes, as gentle and steady as a lighthouse through pouring rain. He pauses at the foot of the hill, stares a moment longer, and closes his eyes.

* * *

He’s lying down when he opens his eyes again.

An unfamiliar tiled ceiling cast in dim, flickering shadows greets him.

There is pain and there is fear, more tangible now than Eddie ever remembers them being, but there is warmth, too. Thrumming in his chest, fluttering in his veins. He does not know where he is or how long he’s been there, but he knows he’s _safe._

He clings to that knowledge like a precious talisman.

There are noises all around him; soft, muffled noises, noises that should send his heart rate roaring in his ears but instead settle like a security blanket over his senses. He’s not alone - of course he’s not alone. There are people with him.

 _His_ people are with him.

“I’d do _anything_ ,” a voice whispers near his hip.

Adrenaline bursts like a grenade behind Eddie’s eyes, but recognition tamps it down before it surges through his veins.

“I’d - I’d rip my fucking heart out and _give_ it to you, if they said you needed it,” the whispered voice continues. “I’d give you my heart, my lungs, my bones, my blood, my - my fuckin’ _everything,_ man, I’d give you _anything_ you asked for, anything you _need_. Please. _Please. Please come back to me._ ”

A heavy weight pins Eddie’s right hand down; he struggles against it, willing his weary tendons to cooperate and _fight._

A sharp intake of breath, a shift in the soft plane beneath his hip. He can’t lift his head from the pillow, but he can feel the eyes on his face. “Ed- Eddie?” the voice whispers.

Eddie parts his lips and blows out a breath through his teeth.

The weight disappears around his hand at the same time a quiet groan of chair legs scraping against tile sounds throughout the room, and then Eddie’s blurry vision is full of Richie’s face - _Richie,_ looking gaunt and haunted and pale like a man who’s almost lost himself in the throes of grief, but still, still _Richie, his Richie._

Richie’s blue eyes swim in thick tears that make their home splattered on the inward curve of his cracked lenses. “Eddie,” he says again - a revelation, a prayer. “ _Eddie._ ”

Eddie’s tongue feels thick and water-logged, but that doesn’t stop him from tracing the shape of Richie’s name between his teeth. He lets out a sound - quiet and airy and unintelligible - but it’s enough.

Richie’s forehead presses against Eddie’s neck, one hand buried up high in Eddie’s hair, the other holding most of Richie’s weight against the mattress above Eddie’s shoulder. Richie’s managed to perfect the art of sobbing near-silently; between aborted gasps and muted sniffles, Eddie can still hear the muffled sleep-sounds of the unidentified others in the room, carrying on steadily, unaware. His limbs are slow and uncoordinated but he manages to find the back of Richie’s head; in the sporadic lightning bolts of feeling crackling through his fingers, Eddie registers the warmth and softness of Richie’s long hair, and the knowledge carves itself in neatly over his days old note on Richie’s hair’s objectively pleasing aesthetic.

Richie, as far as Eddie can tell, completely loses touch with reality for a full ten minutes. Eddie doesn’t mind at all, pleased to have an excuse to touch, to feel, the way he used to crave when he was thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and seventeen and eighteen and forty. Richie’s grip on Eddie’s hair is firm, but not pulling; like he’s afraid Eddie might slip away again if he loosens his grip for too long. Eddie strokes Richie’s hair and thinks about the fire he left burning on the hearth.

“I thought - I thought -” Richie’s whisper is strangled and near-hysterical when he pulls away just far enough to meet Eddie’s eyes. Eddie frowns - at the half-formed nightmare unfolding in Richie’s eyes, at the razor-sharp edge of panic scraping hard at the edges of each word. “They almost couldn’t - couldn’t s-save you -”

Eddie lays a clumsy hand over Richie’s mouth, his own lips parting in shock at the heat that radiates beneath the pads of his frigid fingers. Richie blinks at him, pupils blown too wide in the darkness. Eddie’s hand shifts, fingers splaying out along the defined slant of his jaw, thumb stroking lightly at the seam of Richie’s lips. He can feel the heat rising in Richie’s cheek.

“I’m okay,” Eddie manages to rasp, a paper-thin wisp of air whisked away by the heater’s quiet hum near the window. “You’re here. I’m okay now.”

“I carried you out, I couldn’t l-leave you behind,” Richie whispers, and the movement jostles Eddie’s thumb down to Richie’s chin. “I rode in the ambulance with you. They - they wouldn’t let me in when they took you into your surgeries, but I was with you every single second they let me. I couldn’t leave you behind, Eds. I couldn’t - I _couldn’t._ ”

( _Firewood._ )

“I was with you, too,” Eddie whispers. “I never left.”

He knows without parsing that Richie believes him.

“You’re the bravest, _strongest_ motherfucker I know,” Richie whispers, a hysterical laugh bubbling up on the coattails of his words. “I swear to god, I - I think I fell in love with you all over again the last couple of days. I -” he stops suddenly, looking vaguely surprised, half-stricken. Not at the admission, but rather at the casual nature of the slip; slowly, Eddie drags his thumb down over the sharp curve of Richie’s chin, relishing at the gritty stubble scratching gently at his skin. “Fuck, that - that came out wrong -”

Eddie’s thinking of the fire on the hearth when he speaks. “You’ve had my entire heart in the palm of your clammy-ass hand for as long as I can remember, Rich,” he murmurs, pleased at the (scratchy, but _alive_ ) way his voice crackles to life and catches in his throat. New tears spring up in Richie’s eyes and streak down his face with an alarming velocity; they tangle in Eddie’s fingers like twine, warm and salty.

“Fuck,” Richie whispers, and the chair legs scrape against the floor again - like he’s edging closer. “ _Fuck,_ Eddie, I’m - you have _no idea_ how _gone_ I am for you, how gone I’ve _always been_ for you. You were just like - like this, this fuckin’ _spitfire_ living right at the center of my chest, except now it’s more like a whole goddamn bonfire lighting up every inch of me and - I didn’t think I was, like, _capable_ of feeling _this much_ for a person, but - you just got inside of me and laid down all these roots and I just, I just really, _really_ fucking love you, I’m _so fucking in love with you_ I feel like I could actually lose my entire mind over it.”

( _I’ll build my house inside his heart with those roots._ )

Eddie lets his thumb brush against Richie’s lips again; Richie kisses it tenderly.

“I want to keep you.”

Richie smiles wetly, lips quirking beneath Eddie’s thumb. “You’ve always had me.”

Richie leans over him to press another soft, tender kiss to Eddie’s chapped lips, and Eddie smiles into it, thinking of an old stone cottage nearly overgrown with ivy.

**Author's Note:**

> [come yell with me about these characters on tumblr i am genuinely going to lose my mind over them](elsaclack.tumblr.com)


End file.
